Who Me? Ninja!

Just got myself a new uke and can’t stop playing it. The thing is… it does old songs really well.

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Walking home on Sunday night
I passed a couple at a bus stop
Loving each other
With eyes locked into eyes
And arms locked into arms,
And just as I reached them,
I heard him say,

You know something I’ve always
Wanted to do but couldn’t do?

And though I wanted to stay
And listen,
I knew it wasn’t meant for me,
So I just made up the rest,

I want to race an airplane on a runway
And win, till it crosses me by,
It’ll be a short race,

I want to bite the end of the cone off
And suck the whole scoop through it,

I want to make love under a streetlight

(To which I’d like to imagine she’d push
him away, but just so)

I want to play hobo for a day, then take
All the loose change and toss it into the Thames,
Watching the tuppence plop, one by one,

I want to pretend I’m a busker playing an
Exotic instrument, when in fact I’d just be
Beating an old shoe box,

I want to read the Ulysses and get past
Page 255 for once,

I want to burn my laptop, Blackberry, iPad,

(And she would remind him he didn’t have an iPad)

I want to own an iPad… to burn,

(Yeah right, she’d say, but how will I reach you?)

Just call my name,

(She’d laugh- That’s silly!),

Shh… I want to find a magic lamp and wish
That I may breathe you forever,
Breathing me,

So that’s what I thought he’d want to do
That he couldn’t do,

As for me, I wanted to call someone,
And hear her say,

I was just thinking of you.

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What is a War Crime? Who is the victim and who is the victimizer? Where do we draw the line?

I came across this video on CollateralMurder.com. It shows the indiscriminate killing of two Reuters journalists in an unprovoked trigger happy frenzy of US soldiers in Baghdad. The wounded included two kids. The soldiers shot at what they thought were terrorists carrying guns. As it happens, they couldn’t tell the difference between an AK47 and a camera. They then shot at a van that tried to rescue a wounded journalist.

They cheered the shots. Whooped. Joked about how a Bradley tank had driven over a body. Shrugged off the news that kids had been shot at. Then there was a cover up. Reuters demanded the video footage and they couldn’t get it. Wikileaks.com let it out. Brace up. And think.

I’m not sure if I want to take sides. I have family in the armed forces in India. I get to hear their part of the story. My friends in Kashmir have shared their bit. Philip Zimbardo in the Lucifer Effect writes about what makes people evil. What makes a perfectly ordinary person commit crimes and then go back home and sleep it off.

It’s the operating system of the world we exist in that is flawed. It’s the apparatus of the human mind that is corruptible. We are the plague on the planet. And we hate each other. If only we could have an exodus of current ethical standards and if only empathy was more important than oil or bombs or water, we would probably stand a chance of getting better. We as a race our unwell. Empathy is the cure. That’s where it all begins.

Every ideological system has a seed of good intentions behind it. And I mean “every” system without exception. Then we start to think about it. And more people think about it. They discuss it. Meanings get lost in linguistics, signs are muddled in semiotics. We make it human. Then shit hits the fan. I guess that’s how it is every time.

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Warning: Before you proceed, this is a little like watching your great grand mum in the buff. So viewer discretion is advised.

Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian actress went commando in a scene from Extasis, a 1933 Czech flick. She invariably made entertainment history by being the first celebrity to show off her assets in a film. The film created so much ruckus, in some circles it’s believed to have sparked off WWII. Okay that’s not true, but Hedy sure was a bomb in her time.

Here’s a quick run through of the events that followed the release of the film.

It was banned in Germany, because Hedy was a Jew. Though the truth could just as well be that it made the Nazi boys all tingly, and they’d forget to heil the Fuhrer.

Pope Pius XI had the official Vatican paper condemn it. Which leads us to wonder about the truth of the secret naughty vault somewhere there.

Hedy’s husband Fritz Mandl was so peeved, he tried to buy and burn all copies of the film. That’s not all, he even kept her prisoner in their mansion for a couple of years, till she escaped dressed as a maid, and went on to marry 5 other guys. The last of these Joes was a lawyer who helped her fight the divorce case against the second last.

Quite a fiesty woman, makes Lindsay Lohan look like a minor character in a Dickensian novel.

Just a passing thought, is it just me or do you too see a Freudian motif in the horse in the scene?

Here’s a list of Top 100 Celebrity Nude Scenes compiled by MrSkin.com. Fun in a harmless sort of way and surprising in a gag and sputter style.

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Geeks can be sexy too. Watch this video by The Guild. It’s the new Geek Anthem and the singer is a flag every stubby fingered, bespectacled, social outcast and closet genius wants to unfurl. The Guild is a very popular web series on gaming, and great fun to watch. And along with that…  believe it or not, we have a gaming video from Bollywood, shot in the 1970s. I’m still reeling from it.

The lead, Felicia Day, is one of the protagonists of The Guild. She’s the new Geek Icon and rightly so. She was home-schooled all her life and went on to do a double major in mathematics and violin performance in college. She has appeared in 8 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Vi. You can also catch her in the juicily titled online musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Do check out her blog.

The next clip is from Hum Joli. Your dad will remember the exciting gaming revolution this flick kicked off. It was Badminton. Perhaps the crazy little word ShuttleCock had something to do with the sparks that flew. But this was just the beginning and the 80s had a sludge of fantasy films. Before World of WarCraft there was this hairy beast on the right.

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Ninjas unearthed from the darkest realms of the internet. Watch these videos and be afraid. A stray shuriken may trim a little more than just your fringe.

Ninja Movie Auditions

I am Dangerous… watch this!

A Ninja Pays Half My Rent

A Ninja Pays Half My Rent

Pass me the Syrup… Pass me the Syrup… Please Pass me the Syrup

Ninja Baby

Ninjas aren’t made… Ninjas are born!

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From the super creative mind of edgy designer Lauren McCarthy comes a diabolic new device to make you smile… painfully. This is the Happiness Hat, an excellent Christmas present for the family grouch.

The beanie works on mechanics that would make Vlad the Impaler proud. Here’s the description from Lauren McCarthy’s site:

An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile.

This essentially means that if you don’t smile, a metal spike is going to stab you on the back of the head, till you do. Which would perhaps explain the pained look in the eyes. It’s a little like taking a picture with Jack the Ripper in a photo booth, or making polite conversation with the ugliest blind date you’ve gotten yourself stuck with.

According to Lauren, the Happiness Hat will train your brain to induce a smile over a period of time. So regardless of how you feel, you’ll be baring your teeth in a psychotic grin.

Watch the video, and watch the eyes.

happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

The Happiness Hat has been made using Arduino, which is perhaps the coolest thing I’ve come across in a while. It’s basically an electronic platform developed for creative people. You program a chip using the Arduino lingo (relatively simpler to learn) and you come up with killer stuff. More on Arduino later.

The Happiness Hat is first in a series of Tools for Improved Social Inter-Acting.

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Next time you’re pulled up for bad driving by the cops, don’t blame it on the beer, blame it on your genes. According to a research, some people have a gene variant and don’t stay on the road as well as their counterparts.

The gene variant limits the availability of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). This protein essentially aids memory. When people are focusing on a task, BDNF is secreted. This means that folks with this variant forget faster and make more mistakes. So if you think your mum’s a bad driver, imagine what your girlfriend thinks of you- you and your parents share the same gene pool. If it’s any consolation, nearly 30% of drivers in the US have the gene variant. So you and your mum are not alone. But if you keep driving the way you do, there will definitely be fewer people on the roads. That can get lonely eventually.

Now don’t get excited with your newly acquired genetic knowledge. The research process to test this hypothesis is well… not particularly robust. 29 folks drove 15 laps on a simulator that required them to learn the nuances of a track with difficult curves and turns. The researchers measured how well participants stayed on course. 7 of the 29 participants had the gene variant. They were also the 7 who probably scored the worst. Ironically, the drivers repeated the simulator test four days later and the results were still consistent.

Researchers are convinced that this experiment on a larger scale will just strengthen their hypothesis. I don’t know, does making a hi-score in Need for Speed make you a better driver?

Coming back to the real world, lead researcher Steven Cramer, neurology associate professor at the University of California, wonders if the accident rate of people in car crashes is higher for drivers with this variant.

I hope they’ll come up with a commercial kit to test the variance, so we can brand the bad drivers with the Funky Gene Glow in the Dark Warning, and dive off the roads when we see them.

For now, watch this killer commercial. It has a car but no bad driving. So how does it link to this post? It’s got 2 Japanese guys and gruesome humor. Hah! I love it.

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Sean Murphy could have just as well become the hero of all people afraid of roaches. He has tormented 16 roaches by stuffing them in his mouth and setting an unofficial world record. The last record was 11 roaches.

Murphy, who works at a pet store had come across the previous world record and figured he could do better. Opportunity presented itself when they started thinking of a killer Halloween stunt to drive traffic to their store.

According to Murphy, he keeps the roaches cool and comfortable before stuffing them in his mouth. But they get warm soon and start crawling around. Sometimes they tend to explore his throat. We understand if this makes you queasy, but frankly, we thrive on facts like this.

Each roach is about 2.5 inches long. These mega roaches have barbed feet which makes them slightly uncomfortable to have in the mouth. Nevertheless, Murphy has pulled the stunt off. He is awaiting a reply from the Guinness Book of World Records. Watch the super cool video and go green.

In an another indirectly related roach news, Dr. Kambhampati, an entomologist (folks who study insects), is rather bugged. His research has shown that cockroaches don’t need to pee. Seriously!

Because of an evolutionary quirk, the roaches have been outfitted with a microbe called the Blattabacterium, which through some complicated chemical means breaks down the components of uric acid. Other genes then recycle these molecules and use them to make amino acids, repair cell walls and membranes, and perform other metabolic tasks. The overly curious can read the details on Wired.com.

The fact that roaches don’t pee doesn’t bug Dr. Kambhampati. The fact that roaches cannot exist without this microbe is the key to the good doctor’s angst. Apparently new pesticides are being created which don’t kill the roach directly but destroy the microbe inside it.

I don’t see the point. How is a dead roach less important than a roach that doesn’t pee? The doctor is pissed off that his research is being used against the roaches. It’s like what Oppenheimer would have felt when he witnessed the enormous power of the H-Bomb for the first time. He was thinking of all the good stuff that could be done with atomic research, and then they almost wiped out the Japs.

However, there’s still one little thing that’s really bothering me about all this, if roaches don’t pee, why are they in my loo?

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Here is one kid you don’t want to say Who’s Your Daddy to. He’ll bench press on your head and use your mama as a dumbbell. Giuliano Stroe, aged five, is Romania’s answer to Rorschach from Watchmen or if you’re Indian… the Amazing Khalli.

This pint sized He Man or He Toddler has been working out since he was two. And he now holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest hand walk, 10 meters, with a weight ball between his legs.

His father, in case you do decide to ask- Who’s Your Daddy – says that he doesn’t push him very much. They go to the gym, and when he gets tired, they go play. It’s a good idea, I wouldn’t push the Incredibly Tiny Hulk either. A temper tantrum could result in a serious concussion. In all the fairness though, Little Giuliano does seem like a sweet kid.

Watch this incredible video of Giuliano Stroe working out and doing his killer gym champ moves. And while you’re at it, think of what you were doing at age five. Wetting the bed, talking to your teddy, tormenting the puppy?

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